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CRIME

Danish police chase clues in motorway ‘stone murder’ case

Funen Police announced on Tuesday evening that the German driver of a vehicle that was struck by a 30 kilo stone tile is now out of critical condition.

Published: 24 August 2016 10:07 CEST
Danish police chase clues in motorway ‘stone murder’ case
Police technicians look for clues on the overpass. Photo: Kim Rune/Scanpix
The 36-year-old male driver’s 33-year-old wife was killed when the stone was thrown from a motorway overpass on Sunday morning. Their five year-old son escaped serious injury. 
 
Police said that an autopsy of the female victim proved without a doubt that she was killed directly by the heavy tile. 
 
 
“We can now say with certainty that the cement block cost the woman her life but beyond that we do not want to get in to the details of the autopsy results,” Commissioner Michael Lichtenstein said in a press release. 
 
The 36-year-old German man is still in an artificially-induced coma at Odense University Hospital. 
 
Lichtenstein said police have been contacted by several hundred members of the local community following the deadly incident, which police are treating as a murder and attempted murder.
 
“We are working intensively to sort through the enquiries from the public. But we are still missing information on where the stones that were thrown from the overpass came from,” Lichtenstein said. 
 
He added that many private citizens and local businesses have offered to put up a reward for any information that would lead to an arrest. 
 
“The enquiries about a reward go to show how much this case has affected the public,” he said. 
 
Funen Police said early this week that Sunday’s fatal incident was at least the third time over the course of the weekend that heavy stones were thrown on moving cars from the same overpass. 

CRIME

Danish government backs removing children from gang-connected families

Denmark’s government wants authorities to be able to move children out of families in which parents are gang members and is likely to formalise the measure in parliament.

Published: 9 April 2024 13:38 CEST
Danish government backs removing children from gang-connected families

The justice spokesperson with senior coalition partner the Social Democrats, Bjørn Brandenborg, told regional media TV2 Fyn that he wants authorities to have the power to remove children from their families in certain circumstances where the parents are gang members.

Brandenborg’s comments came on Monday, after Odense Municipality said it had spent 226 million kroner since 2009 on social services for eight specific families with gang connections.

“There is simply a need for us to give the authorities full backing and power to forcibly remove children early so we break the food chain and the children don’t become part of gang circles,” he said.

The measure will be voted on in parliament “within a few weeks”, he said.

An earlier agreement on anti-gang crime measures, which was announced by the government last November, includes provisions for measures of this nature, Brandenborg later confirmed to newswire Ritzau.

“Information [confirming] that close family members of a child or young person have been convicted for gang crime must be included as a significant and element in the municipality’s assessment” of whether an intervention is justified, the agreement states according to Ritzau.

The relevant part of November’s political agreement is expected to be voted on in parliament this month.

READ ALSO: Denmark cracks down on gang crime with extensive new agreement

Last year, Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard told political media Altinget that family relations to a gang member could be a parameter used by authorities when assessing whether a child should be forcibly removed from parents.

In the May 2023 interview, Hummelgaard called the measure a “hard and far-reaching measure”.

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